Interview: Jason Trucco
While strolling along the Hudson River in New York City, Jason Trucco joins me to discuss his career in filmmaking, directing, art, design, and playwriting. In this insightful interview, Trucco opens up about his multifaceted career jumping between the avant garden and the commercial, including directing music videos for icons like Billy Idol, Macy Gray, Devo, and Queens of the Stone Age. Throughout his career he has used new technology in narrative story telling Trucco delves into the integration of AI and immersive technologies in his craft.
We delve deep into his ongoing projects, examining the pivotal role of collaboration, and discussing the crucial elements of passion, creativity, and the inspirational role of walking in his artistic pursuits.
Trucco discusses his creative approach, how he navigates his relationship with his inner critic, and explores the financial challenges of being an artist.
Emphasizing the importance of play, curiosity, and following one's interests in the creative process this interview is insightful for those interested in creative entrepreneurship and the lessons that be applied to other sectors.
Time Stamps
03:40 - Jason’s Bio / Introduction
06:09 - Making Music Videos
10:14 - The Role of Technology in Narrative Story Telling
11:12 - Theatre as Retraction from Technology?
14:01 - Co-Directing Hi-Fi, Wi-Fi Sci-Fi
19:01 - Technology and Formulaic / Regurgitation Storytelling
20:58 - How Jason Approaches a Project
23:40 - The Role of Guilty Pleasures
24:58 - Where ideas come from…
27:00 - The Importance of Collaboration
30:10 - On walking and its importance
32:19 - Six Sex Scenes in Spain / One Act Plays
34:10 - The Role of The Inner Critic
39:19 - Financial Challenges
46:04 - Fear and “We only have these problems while we're alive”
55:03 - Responsibility in Art Making / Discussion on Casting Narrative “Spells”
57:49 - Making “Poetry” / Reverberating Experience with Others
Intro Music Features
California Stars
Words by Woody Guthrie
Music by Jay Bennett & Jeff Tweedy
Performed by Paula & Jason Band - On their cassette, New York Apartment Tapes
Transcription (AI Generated Transcript - please excuse any mistakes in transcription!)
Leafbox (02:35):
Oh, wonderful. Thanks for making the time. Yeah. Well, Jason, the reason I wanted to talk to you is because when I saw the Apple Vision Pro headset, it kind of reminded me of some of the work you did, I don't know, 10 years ago with those 360 degree immersive theater performances and you were doing some theater type work, and I was like, man, I need to talk to Jason and figure out what is happening in Hollywood, what's happening in storytelling. I need to know what does someone actually work in this industry think about what's happening? And I thought, oh man, I got to talk to Jason. So I appreciate, I don't know if that's of interest, if we could talk about that.
Jason Trucco:
Absolutely. I mean, since then, I mean, I know it's funny when we're talking about 360 degrees, there aren't that many directions to go, but I've been doing a lot of different work afterwards and haven't really thought about it in that as a trajectory. But I'm happy to have the conversation and sort of through talking about it, probably see where some of my thinking has evolved in that.
Leafbox (03:40):
So Jason, why don't we start before, for people who don't know who you are, I don't know, I consider you an artist, theater director, storyteller. How do you describe yourself? What are you working on? What was your career up to now? Anything you'd like to share?
Jason Trucco :
Sure. I mean, I think it just as I would an artist and director oftentimes and especially lately, a concentration on theater, but sometimes also music videos and some cinema, I guess I look all of it sort of as an umbrella of art. Right now I'm working on a gallery show called Contacts with an AI theme to it, which I can tell you about. Later developed an oratorio of music with some musicians here in New York, getting ready to do a play in Spain where I've been working in the last two years, quite often about the Cafee cino scene here in New York in the 1960s. So somewhere in that range of things is where my interests lie, and I basically try and follow my interests.
Leafbox :
Jason, I was reading your older blog and you had this essay about your first love being movies. What first brought your attraction to storytelling or movies or where did that come from?
Jason Trucco:
I mean, firstly it would just have to be this idea of really, firstly, I think I can remember a Jack in the Giant and then animated movie as a kid. And how just seeing something 60 feet high and that everyone in the audience laughed at or everyone in the audience gasped from, I think was probably an intoxicating experience and a thrilling experience as a kid. I grew up at a time when kids after school spent a lot of time with television, but television still had the days when there'd be the old movies on. And I guess at some point I developed fascination with them. I mean, it's a rather magical art form to be able to sort of look into someone's imagination. There's some magic to it if it's not always used magically. And
Leafbox (05:55):
Then where did you grow up, Jason?
Jason Trucco:
I was born in California and then as a young boy lived in Toronto, Canada.
Leafbox:
And then what was the first project in the Hollywood or the narrative industry?
Jason Trucco :
Yeah, Social Animal was a company that came out an artistic need. I guess. I've been put together through some people that I was working with the request to do a music video for Macy Gray and the Darren Johnson on, and it was in a place that was just opening up in Los Angeles called Green Door. Our friend Juliano Baquer was doing a photo shoot there, and he introduced me to the people and the request was, we want to do something new. And so I went to see the band play at this club, and the guys who ran the club snapped their fingers and stuck a chair in the middle of the dance floor on this spot. They were like, sit in this chair. So I sat in that chair and as I looked around, they said, now look to your right. You see that table, we make sure that our best patrons are most visible.
Go there, you see this. And they explained to me how they designed the entire room to have some effect to it. And I thought at that moment, I guess the coolest video of these guys playing in this room would be to have them to be able, somebody to be able to sit in my chair and look around. And so from that curiosity, I went to Panavision, I went to and anywhere that I could think of to see what was available, because in my mind it made sense that this technology must have been developed. But people were all very kindly telling me that it was impossible for various reasons, for issues of the lens or for the size of the chips that you'd need at that time. All these reasons that it was impossible. And we ended up doing it, getting in touch with some people who'd worked previously at Circle Vision for Disney, and a team of people who were just willing to try to take the guts of a bunch of cameras and lenses and put them together. That became a company we had to build the equipment to do this video with, and after we did, it needed to be reproduced.
Leafbox (08:34):
Maybe you could just step back in a second for what's the role of music videos at that time? This is the early two thousands. Is that still kind of the MTV strength? Is that how people were kind of discovered as directors or given experimental flexibility? What's the role of music videos still in Hollywood today or back then?
Jason Trucco:
Back then, there were still some channels that were running. It wasn't yet, YouTube might've just been introduced and there were outlets for it, but it was still sort of something that was expected as part of a musician's release. And back then, because of this idea of professional production, people didn't have the same tools in their pockets that we had with the iPhone. Anything that you did that was sort of for broadcast quality, we would shoot a little bit more like a cinema show. There were 35 people involved in shooting it, not just one or two music videos, I guess are in some ways the flyers of bands, the things that they make to be able to advertise in places that used to see them as the music video director, if that's what you're asking. I thought it was a pretty cool forum to be able to do some visually experimental and exciting things because you'd work on something within the confines of the song for a month or two months. They were self-contained with all visual stories.
Leafbox (10:14):
Jason, so moving forward in time, all the iPhone and all the democratization of technology, how has that affected your storytelling? I mean, instead of having to hire 35 grips and production people, how has it made it easier or worse or better for you now?
Jason Trucco:
I think it really makes it, this idea that I didn't know that we'd see in our lifetime, but that sounded good, was I think we really are at a place right now where making a movie technically is available to nearly everyone or nearly nothing. The commodity for people I guess, has become the time and sort of how people organize themselves to be able to creatively collaborate to do such thing. But technically, I mean, on this movie that I'm working on now, and I'm just learning this and surprised by it, but if we needed to pick up a shot, I could shoot it on my iPhone. You could take a shot of lower resolution and AI will blow it up. The idea of professional production definitely seems to me like it's moved from what was perceived as a necessity to what now might be perceived as a luxury.
Leafbox (11:32):
I'm just curious. The first is your retraction to theater, is that a resistance towards the commodification of all the storytelling, is theaters in the present time? And then my second question is just the use of ai. Is that affecting your storytelling or your story building or narrative building or anything like that? Are you returning to the theater practice? You said you're working on something in Spain, maybe you can tell us about that. Is that a resistance towards the ratification of narrative?
Jason Trucco (12:05):
It could be. I have to think that through with you as we talk it through. I mean, I guess I would think of it maybe not as a resistance, but as a place to find the warmth and the enjoyment in it. I remember making a music video that came out and was well received and was successful, and the night that it came out, I was somewhere away. I watched the numbers go up on the screen and I watched the comments come through on the TV, on the computer screen, and there's a certain satisfaction of that, but it's a smaller satisfaction to winning it a slot machine or something. But in the theater, first of all, yes, I like the idea of being able to spend time in rehearsal, spend time with the other designers and creators in a way, and then be able to put it in front of an audience. And that's an important part of it. And even a few hundred people in a room has a charge that I think is probably just more satisfying to me personally. And I don't claim to tell anybody what should turn them on, but for me, I like being in a room with people receiving something and feel something that's being received and see something that can be different each time rather than the feeling of putting something out that's finished and getting the numbers backed.
Leafbox :
And then Jason, I think some of your experiments in theater have brought in some ar VR tools. What's your effort or why do you bring in these technologies into the theater space?
Jason Trucco (14:01):
I mean, the purpose is really poetry, curiosity, sort of just following a warmth of what I am interested in plays that I directed here in New York that are dear to my heart, a collection that I directed with Billy Clark at La Mama called Hi-Fi, Wi-Fi Sci-Fi. And those were some plays that I'd read as a kid in Los Angeles in a book called Robert Patrick's Cheap Theatrics, I believe, and some others put together into collection, but they're plays that were written as science fiction in their days in the seventies and early eighties, but they are no longer science fiction. So for example, a couple falling in love over a screen, but there's a five second delay. And so their message is impeded a couple waking up with a global electronic consciousness or an attempt or an ability to change out the actors and the play youth team.
So the last play in the collection was just the first play or second play replayed again with the actors swapped out. So these were questions that Robert Patrick the playwright was aware of even years before they became possibilities. And I think that the purpose of addressing them today is that those are the things around me. I sort of look at my job is to talk about the things around me. And so for example, I mentioned that right now there's a little show up of a piece called that I did with a friend of mine who's a former technology journalist who writes about ai, his name and tape stuff to the wall and a digital display nearby that tells about the artist in the context of what the piece is. And the digital display changes every two minutes and creates a different, in that way it's using the AI in the art making. And I guess it's also about the idea that AI is being introduced into art making.
Leafbox :
Do you imagine a future where the AI is so programmatically unique enough and fast enough to create narrative stories based on so there's only an audience of one, if you can imagine?
Jason Trucco:
Yeah, I think, I don't have to imagine. I did a little deep dive, which I guess I would think like a binge for days, and I was stunned and delighted and disgusted by how well it is able to put things together that are plausibly human. Many writers that I know struggle with structure a computer doesn't have that trouble of, if you can articulate the structure, it takes direction remarkably well. I mean, it seems to me like it would be a studio executives dream.
Leafbox :
Jason, you sound quite optimistic. I mean, when I was in LA the last time it seemed it was the writer’s strike and everyone was very nervous about the ai. And do you look at more like a tool or do you think it's something they can replace you? What's your relationship? I mean, you said some you had full discuss to enjoyment to,
Jason Trucco :
I mean, I think and true you're talking about in terms of the writer strikes or the things we're done for in some of those areas. I mean already I've gone into, and this is some time ago now, I've gone into a meeting where usually you'd listen to some music and you'd talk and you'd shoot some ideas back and forth, and now you have someone walks into the room with a laptop and things that you're saying, they're typing into an ai, and there's a mood board that's done based on how AI interpreted these words that you've said. And now people are starting to perform consensus over that creatively. And that's at the first ideation stage. The first conversation just as the drummer has gone. So you used to have a drummer core, then you had a drum kit, then you had a drum machine, and now it's basically just like a feature on your desktop. There will still be a call for the live drummers. It doesn't seem like it's a growing industry.
Leafbox (19:00):
One of the parallels I see is in Japanese, they have kanji, right? The characters, the Japanese characters. 30 years ago or 40 years ago, word processors in Japan were not common, so people could physically write out 10,000 characters without problem. From memory, the word processor was introduced and that because of the difficulty of the language, it was kind of restricted to the core 2000 characters of the language that you really use word processors. And if you go on the street now, most people can't write 500 characters because of the digital aid makes you lose those skills. So it's the same as people who, I dunno if you have friends who can't get to the corner that they go every day, the coffee shop without Google Maps. I'm just curious as a storyteller,
Jason Trucco:
Yes. it's absolutely true. And the stories are becoming, I mean, I think it's widely used and I think that people will start to rely on this regurgitation of storytelling, which it also brings up this sort of what feels authentic or doesn't, but I mean it's taking from real people, so it feels fairly plausible. Been reminded of in one of the interviews that you'd done that I was listening to in the last week or so, talking about how when you revisit a memory, you're also decaying it. And I think that that applies to AI quite a bit as well, is that you'll end up having regurgitations and regurgitations of regurgitations and regurgitations of more regurgitation. It feels to me further away from the original fire.
Leafbox :
How are you on your theater performance and the theater shows you're doing? Is the audience changing? How is their viewing experience changing from this technology or from just the current state attention spans? Are they getting bored? Are they more engaged? I'm just curious. I haven't seen theater since pre covid, so maybe I'm sure.
Jason Trucco (21:08):
Yeah, no, no, you and everybody else. Tough for me to generalize about an audience because as soon as you shut the door to the theater, I think that's what I love about it is that it's tough for me to speak for everyone in the audience more a matter of what other options, people have to use stories in an art way, what than a design way.
Leafbox:
Jason, maybe we can go back. What's your approach to a project? You're kind of like an artistic entrepreneur. How do you start a project? Do you first find a play you like? What's your narrative or how do you formulate a project and where does it start to finish?
Jason Trucco (22:09):
It starts and finishes in different places, but usually through, I guess a personal relationship, each project is different. Each project you sort of have to build your own tools for. The plays that I've loved doing in Spain happened because I met Paula and Barbara to wonderful, talented people in Los Angeles, and we decided to write a play. Some people meet and say that we rented a hotel room that night and started writing, and they came to New York and we wrote some songs and scenes, and I went to Barcelona for the first time and we read a series of one acts that we had put together. You meet a lot of people in a lot of places, but sometimes something sparks enough to catch fire. I think a lot of people have the idea of what they could do if they were foolish enough to spend the time to. Sometimes I'm just foolish enough to spend the time to.
Leafbox:
Where do you get the confidence to actually execute on these projects is just from your past or just where do you get the full hard business to just go with
Jason Trucco (23:05):
What is there to be afraid of? I guess mean do you think it requires a great deal of confidence to make something like a play or a picture.
Leafbox:
I mean, I think I've never made a player or a movie, so I think having that spark one is necessary, but two, it's also having the drive and the willpower to do it. A lot of people procrastinate and they don't know how to go straight. For younger people, how do you direct that energy channel? The ideas are dime a dozen, right? So how do you actually execute on that idea?
Jason Trucco:
I like to think that it's the same thing that drives us toward guilty pleasures. I think that it works best when it has that kind of deductive addictive quality. A lot of the rhetoric around art making seems rather clinical and vary. The motivation based sort of focusing on the goal and the efficiency to achieve it. Again, for me personally, and it's like sex. You never know how the other people do it. I think that it has to be something that I can't stop thinking about and that want to take a break from only for enough time to get to the next idea or to be able to move it forward and get back to it. People have those kinds of feelings, other aspects of their life. And I guess I think that if you can develop that artistically, then you don't have to worry about motivation. You just have to worry about opportunity.
Leafbox:
Jason, are these sparks divine or where are these desires have come from? Do they just enter your brain or do you actually slowly brainstorm? What's your process to find these arrows to shoot?
Jason Trucco (24:58):
It's a great question because there's so many possibilities. I would've thought, I think that the first few times that I delved into this area, or when I was younger, I think I would've thought that it could be more designed that you can take, as we talked about AI earlier, that you could take a formula and change a few things and there's a way to reason out what the ending should be. There's a right ending. I think I no longer feel that way. Once I can let go of the idea that the right ending has a right and wrong and that it's really about what I'm feeling, it let me do it with a lot more ease. Where does the sparks come from? Is it divine? It might be because do any ideas come from and do opportunities come from? And where do all the non coincidence coincidences come from?
Wherever all that happens, I guess, is where these things start. I really like the idea that art is useless for any other purpose other than communicating a feeling or an idea. And so I guess it's a matter of when you have a feeling and something delights you enough to start it. And I guess, and I'm sorry for the starting and stopping in this answer, but I guess I'd heard Paul McCartney talk recently about how he and John didn't always write a good song, but they always wrote a song every time they got together. And I think that if I'm comfortable with that part of my process, which is I like to finish the things that I start and not have to appraise them while I'm doing them, it's really just anything that seems enough, like a good idea that I know that I'll take it through the whole process from beginning to end and see.
Leafbox (27:05):
Jason, what's your writing process then? You just said something very important I think, is that you don't review or edit your work as you're doing it. Do you first write it all out and then review it later? What's your actual physical process of doing it?
Jason Trucco:
I'm happiest doing it collaboratively. In which case really we get together somewhere in person, take a walk, and really walking is a very important part of it. Probably a good deal of the work actually happens in the walking around. And that's true, whether it's by myself or if I'm collaborating. There's something really great about taking a walk and trying to deal with something rather than having it sit there on the table between you. I guess it's really kind of a state of mind. I mean, we have a mutual friend, Dennis, and he always talks about, and I think you even mentioned some of the earlier interviews, the Halloween haunted houses that they used to build with kids. You have to be able to enter into some kind of sense of play. It's just serious play. It's just playing with really good players, but you have to be able to. Does that resonate with you in what you do?
Leafbox (28:15):
Oh, a hundred percent. I think when you just, well, two things, I think ideas just come from nowhere. It seems like you'll be walking and it will just float in. And then I'm curious how people remain open or intuitive to those ideas. So sometimes you get an idea and you'll ignore it or something, graphs. So that's an interesting aspect of the mind, just what makes you actually hook onto something. And then two, a lot of other people, I feel art, making theater, writing a poem, building a business. It all seems in the end, like you said, play. So I think if you're having fun, everything else kind of just falls into play and then it will just eventually build, and it's like a Lego set. Once you build it, maybe you'll make it even bigger, or maybe you'll throw it away or maybe you'll give it to a friend and donate the toy. So it's an interesting metaphor, I think, for just life in general and doing any creative project. The aspect of play.
Jason Trucco:
Yeah. Yeah, I think so because it seems to me that most of the people that I talk to that are struggling to do something creative are very hard on themselves. They're already writing the critical reviews for something that hasn't even had a chance to exist yet. And once again, that's actually something else I really like about the theater as distinct from traditional cinema, let's say working in it is the idea that a play doesn't have to be the only production of that play. You can do it somewhere and then you can do it again, then you can do it again, and then other people will be doing it. There's some freedom in that and not try and lock yourself down. Are
Leafbox:
Are you walking right now in New York?
Jason Trucco:
Yeah, I'm right now down by the west side. I'm actually looking at the Hudson River.
Leafbox :
Oh, awesome. No, no, it's great. So yeah, I feel like the walking aspect is something that's very interesting. I think a lot of people learn from that tip. The physicality of that is important. I think
Jason Trucco :
I agree. I mean, I really, I notice how it can affect your mood, how it can free things up, that if you're walking with someone, there's not necessarily, you're not looking at the clock to see, okay, we're meeting for this hour. They can go a little long. They can go a little short. Life is bringing you so many different possibilities without interrupting your thought, but just offering invitations. Yeah, I agree. I think walking is super cool. Do you also do a lot of your work walking?
Leafbox :
Yeah, I have phone calls and work calls just on the phone walking. It's a good double use.
Jason Trucco (31:08):
Yeah, I remember. I mean, in Los Angeles I used to love that because I would walk down the street and I'd be the only one walking, but I love to on these empty streets.
Leafbox:
No, LA is the best. I don't think. Dennis and I walked across LA from the east side to the west side, like 25 miles once in one day. I've done it three times now. I took Melrose once, sunset and Wilshire. Is that the other one that cuts across? Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. It's the best thing to do in la. No one thinks you can walk la, but it's great. Every imaginable culture, every food, you don't need to bring anything. It's like hiking, but you just buy a drink wherever you want or have a taco or if you have the patience and time for a day of walking LA is pretty interesting to walk.
Jason Trucco :
Yeah, it's amazing. I agree with everything you said. It's a beautiful place to walk and it's such a luxury to walk among such great things, but it's still pretty wide open here in New York. You're never really on any street by yourself.
Leafbox:
Anyway, Jason, going back to your work, maybe you can tell us just what's your play about in Spain? What's the status, how's it going, how's working with the two other ladies
Jason Trucco :
That relationship really opened up to being a beautiful few plays. We met, as we told you, and ended up making these six one acts called Six Sex Scenes from a Spanish trilogy. Again, I don't know where it comes from, but just as I was putting it together, I was sort of thinking of it in my head as these three Spanish plays that these one acts came from, and we read them in a place called the Salon Beckett in Barcelona, which is again talking about walking a really wonderful place to walk and work beautifully. Somebody from the Grec Festival enjoyed the one X and met with us and said that they'd like to do the full length plays at their festival. So came back the next year to do a play called Richard III, and they've never heard of Love, which was a play with music. The play was sort of semi autobiographical for the girls and for me, and some of the characters were very much like us and American director to Spanish actresses who meet in Los Angeles. I was thinking about how you're like a director in this sense, what you're doing is to directing in terms of keeping in mind what the big picture will be while the events of life are happening.
Leafbox :
That's one of the critiques of interviews is that there's always a theatrical element to it. Usually that's why maybe I should do them walking, just walking with people, and then that kind of flows away because oftentimes the interviewee, some of the people I interview, they just won't answer questions or, and then the interview will end and then all the great stuff comes out. I don't know if you have an issue with self-censorship or Yeah, maybe we can talk about that or how you present yourself as an artist. Yeah, I
Jason Trucco :
Mean, yeah, it's a really interesting question, and it's interesting too. I don't tend to talk a lot about myself and about my art making except to the people immediately around me in terms of self censorship, as I said, I guess I like to imagine not a sensor, but maybe a critic.
Leafbox:
So Jason, going back to the idea of the critic, how do you interact with your own inner critic and what advice do you have for people with that problem or aspect?
Jason Trucco:
I guess I think of mine the way that people would like to think of God different ways, but some people think of God as the Father in heaven who loves you, but a supportive one. I'm trying in our conversation, not to censor myself or to think of another audience other than trying to answer your question and talk to you with the trust that you, in a theatrical way will take all of these jumble and articulate words that I'm putting out and find the gems and put them together in an order that creates meaning for you,
Leafbox :
Jason going to inspiration you. I would consider experimental on the border between the industry or Hollywood, and then the more experimental. Where is the underground right now? Where is the real avant garde? I'm just curious, is that the right wing? Is it Russia? I just don't know where Is it? North Korean theater? I don't know. Where is the most, not radical, but interesting, non standard artistic.
Jason Trucco:
It's in people. Well, it's in people. I mean, it's a spirit that I tend to find or maybe find me, although I'm not sure. I'm not sure I could point anyone to it per se, because I feel that we're in a time that people are fairly on the grid. It's amazing to be talking to the most radical underground basement playwrights about their Facebook posts. There's something about the open facing internet and the idea that so many things, at least some aspect of the art making takes place on a platform that makes everything to me personally feel a little less radical and underground. Do you feel that at all?
Leafbox :
Well, like you said, they're all being funneled through the same gatekeepers, right? So I'm trying to see how do you get outside of those gatekeepers, the Facebook or the Instagram or et cetera?
Jason Trucco:
I mean, yeah, I don't use them, but it's not in a political way where I'm trying to make a statement or to influence. I guess for me, it's a matter of, like you're saying is how do I get away from it is I really try and focus on the person that I'm talking to or the person that I'm writing to. I don't really make general and don't do things like that. And I guess I talk to people in terms of professionally, I'm talking to the audience through the artworks themselves, and the other conversations are personal or collaboration conversations that are talking about how the soup is made,
Leafbox :
Talking about how the soup is made. One of my last questions, Jason, is that you were with a gallery, I believe I forget the name of the gallery. Gallery. How was the process of working with the gallerist?
Jason Trucco :
I think you were talking about Annie Wharton. Working with Annie was really remarkable because she was adamant about my following, just my gut feeling, and she really wanted to support whatever was coming out of me, didn't want to cover it. I'll always be thankful to, and she is a wonderful artist herself, and as a gallerist, she really stood behind that. There aren't that many people that I've met in working, although I've been really fortunate to meet a few wonderful ones that really are in it to support the curiosity of the art itself.
Leafbox:
And then Jason, maybe on a more practical term, I know you said a lot of your artists just based on meeting people and collaboration, how does the financial aspect of art making affect your work? How do you fund these theater shows? Is it ticket sales? What's the practicality of that?
Jason Trucco:
Well, it's becoming more and more of a mystery. That's a question that I'm asking a lot more in meetings as well. I mean, obviously the music videos and those things came from a record industry that used to support that, and it's been fewer and fewer projects that have allowed that. Some of the projects that I did with Kai in Los Angeles, some of those projects I think benefited from the time that we were doing them because they were special in some way. So we worked with Queen of the Stone Age, we worked with Glen Campbell, we worked with Devo, I worked with Billy Ile. And in some cases, because at that time, and we're talking, I guess did you say about the turn of the millennium that many of the new technologies were exciting in the for-profit world of rock and roll, let's say, but also through another areas, people were willing to put some resources towards new technologies, new ways of telling stories.
And I think that now that's still true, and perhaps I'm bullish about it because it's a lot tougher to get money for an actor's salary than it is for something that's using the newest tool and the requests from artistic directors and people that I talk to that have the ability to give me work and to give us work because my work is all working with someone else these days are asking, what can we do with one actor, one gentleman, the Verona? What can we do with no actor? Isn't there some way that we could solve the problem with technology? I guess we started the conversation you were asking me about the fight. I guess that is where there's the biggest struggle is that I'd like there to be resources for me and my wonderful collaborators to be able to take a walk and sit in a room.
Leafbox :
It is just funny. I'm not a Marxist, but if you read all this from a Marxist lens, it all seems like dehumanization, commodification of the resources, the technology's replacing the human aspect.
Jason Trucco (42:18):
Absolutely. I mean, I don't know. You can tell me how you observe it, but I observe people very, very fascinated with the latest gadget or the latest software, and less so with the latest poem.
Leafbox :
I think on the positive aspect, I think like you said, the beginning side, it's the democratization of all these tools makes it available for anyone to be a storyteller, but instead of having an audience of X large percentage controlled by certain gatekeepers, I think we're all going to have an audience of 15 people who are maybe more loyal than the 15 million. So I think there's an artist moments, and I think he said, well be famous. What for 15 people instead of 15 minutes?
Jason Trucco :
I like it. I wish that there was a way to, it's gathering the 15 people. That's the challenge. If you can do it for 15 people a night, I'm not sure what the sustainability is of being able to find a place to do it in some of these places. And that's where it's down to. I mean, I like the idea of doing something for small audiences, and I do think that that's the place where a lot of exciting things happen. I think it's also in trying to find people who are in the creative sphere that might have some of the business acumen to think through some schemes that could be helpful. Because in the creative area, I think people tend to shy away from those roles as producers or very business-minded kind of people, and maybe rightfully so, the most creative business people tend to apply themselves to things that have higher feelings.
Leafbox (44:20):
Like you said, whatever, 20 years ago, the record companies would fund your, they'd assign you a suit and give you a producer, and you could focus on the artistic part. Now, the smaller and smaller record companies have outsourced all their marketing to the actual artist. They won't sign an artist unless that artist already has an existing what TikTok following or Instagram base. You could be the most creative title in the world, but they won't hire you unless you already come with an audience, it seems like. So they've outsourced all that marketing.
Jason Trucco :
Yeah, no, it's absolutely true. And outsourcing many aspects of it. We talked a little bit about Paula, my dear friend and collaborator. After our plays and after the world shut down, before we were able to bring the play from Spain to New York, Paula released her music in Spain as music under a character's name and became wildly popular there. So she's an example of somebody who's built a career outside of a record company, taking care of her own materials, booking her tour, rehearsing it, putting the people together, see the wonderful side of it. And as you were describing, I can see the build the challenges of it for people who are wanting to or needing to be supported in that effort.
Leafbox :
I guess it comes back to the concept of play if you're having fun, but what advice do you have people, how do you encounter these challenges? How do you keep going when things are always shifting and changing?
Jason Trucco :
There is a rabbi who I love in Los Angeles, and he says that his mother always used to say, we only have these problems while we're alive. I don't like to give advice a lot because I don't take it a lot, but I come back and think about that often because it isn't always a picnic, and things don't always fall in your lap, although they're obviously the best when they do. And so I think to try and the best we can enjoy the fact that we're struggling on struggles that we enjoy with people that we enjoy, hopefully. I'm also reminded of something that I get from working with my friend Paula too, that we tend to look at things of how to make sense. She often says, oh, so this way it has sense. And I think it's that being able to take the things that the world provides and put them together in the shape and order, they have sense. You may not have control over what those pieces are, but you have some control about how you organize them and react to them. None of this is wisdom for me, but it's wisdom. I'm happy to pass through me if I envision the person you're asking me to share it with.
Leafbox :
And then Jason, how can people find your work or your other work? What's the best way for people to get ahold of you?
Jason Trucco :
What a great question. I tend not to have any personal marketing, so the best way to get ahold of me might be to get ahold of you and you could put them in touch with me. My work is variously presented by the presenters, the theaters or the bands or the galleries, and I'm sure that you can find some, my apologies for not having it organized in one place. I just sort of adopted this as a tradition.
Leafbox :
So why is that habit, why do you, not humble, but why are you so behind the scenes when you have a lot of things being produced, and why do you kind of hide behind the curtains?
Jason Trucco :
First of all, it doesn't take a lot of hiding because it's not doing things like that. And I guess I take these kinds of things so seriously, let's say show making or making a photograph or writing something, and I put so much effort into the play or the picture or the gallery show, I guess. I think that it would be a whole other job to have to have a public facing character, and that's probably how I would approach it. I guess also, I think that some of the greatest experiences that I've had happen in private, and I don't have just compulsion that the things that I'm enjoying the most as a person is something that ought to be shared.
Leafbox :
No, I think that's a beautiful answer. It's interesting going back to the concept of interviews and the theater, it's almost like you don't want to play the role. You're sufficiently content playing the other role that you're in the maker, right? You don't want to be the actor in the play.
Jason Trucco :
Yes, I don't want to be doing all this work alone. I don't want to be the star of my own production based on a story by me. I do make some works, visual works and those kinds of things by myself, but even those generally have some other component of working with people because I feel like that's one of the best ways to spend my time.
Leafbox :
Great. Anyway, Jason, anything else you want to share other than your advice for walking?
Jason Trucco :
Well, along with walking, it's interesting just because I'm here today. This is someplace that I come a lot with. A friend of mine named Daniel Root who just wrote or just put together a book called New York Bars at dawn. He walks every morning at dawn and photographs, places that have interesting light situations, and a lot of his work came out of that walk. I think it's nice that you centered in on it. I'm also interested in what have you been up to and what's inspired you lately to start this series?
Leafbox (50:57):
I'm interested in just building parallel, I guess, societies where people are just making things that are interest across all media, be it a writer or be it a farmer, be it a chocolate maker, be it anyone really a technologist, a video game person. I think there's common threads, and I'm trying to find where those entrepreneurial creative threads come from and how people are motivated. So if you can learn from a cheesemaker or you can learn from a playwright, I think there's similar parallel worlds. And I'm also interested in just breaking echo chambers. So I don't really have a left right diagram or interest. I'm not interested in politics really, but obviously it affects them. So I'm just trying to see how we can try to, the world's so polarized now, so if you can talk to someone who's totally different than you, maybe you can find some similarities.
And I think that can have some, and then I read this amazing statistic that something like 99% of the content on the internet is made by less than 1% of the people. So it seems like we should be able to, if you're actually want to have any influence of how things are going, it is better to be a part of the 1%, right? Just putting things out there than you, like you said, you get messages out, maybe you don't. You only need a thousand people reading, and then something happens. Maybe someone will be inspired and do something. And I don't know. I like talking to weird people too. It's interesting, totally outside of one's sphere, if I talk to them, just see what they're up to. A barkeeper in New York, how's their life? I interviewed this homeless guy. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing. You know what I mean? So you can just learn. And if you put things out there, a few thousand people, listen. That's something, right? If you actually imagine it as a room, it's actually kind of wild, like a theater
Jason Trucco (52:59):
Performance. Well, I mean, again, I go back to this. I'm not even into a few thousand people. I'm sure maybe through the run of a play, a few thousand people see it, but I keep thinking about some of the greatest things that I've been to where it was like three people in the audience. I mean, that's what, maybe to go back to that question that you addressed earlier is that I think that we've whacked our scale up a little bit for impact. The reason that I ended up making the play that I did at the festival was because we did the reading of our one acts in the smallest room that theathre had available to us. One of those 30 people happened to be the right person to bring this adventure into our lives. They talk about when the police played America for the first time and playing for empty bars to get through the tour. There's an aspect of the show must go on that helps with it. And maybe it's something that, I know that sometimes people take it in a way that feels like a boot on their neck, but I think that the idea of that the show must go on, and whether it happens for an audience or whether it just happens because it happens, it can be a wonderful thing, and that the impact isn't measurable.
Leafbox:
So I mean, like you say, you just have to keep making things and listen to that spirit, and sometimes you make things and sometimes you don't and just go with the flow, I guess. Right?
Jason Trucco :
It's like poetry. It's reacting to the world around you, not necessarily with the design to change it, but just to describe feeling. I mean, I guess it's following the tradition of those cave paintings, trying to use technology to tell somebody that wasn't there, what it was like to be there.
Leafbox:
But Jason, what's so interesting about producing art, those cave drawings or AI generated drawings is that when you produce, there's a spell making aspect. When you write poems, you're actually influencing and creating a reality. So you're actually partaking in actual magic. So even if you would make that theater for three people and that you're actually entering into their shared reality, which is absolutely beautiful and wild.
Jason Trucco (55:33):
Yeah, it absolutely does. And it reverberates. I mean, as I said in the play, Richard III, the character that Paula plays becomes a big superstar. The mayor of Barcelona talks to her, she becomes pregnant. All these things that seemed outlandish from where the people we originally based the characters on were in our lives at that time. But so many of the things that seemed outlandish in the play has come to pass. And there's a magical feeling about it. As you said, saying a word at the right time, not that there's the right time, but at the right time for someone to hear it can influence something thousands of years later. I mean, it's something that I love about the Torah. You're looking at a story both in the sense of the story between people, but also in the reverberations hundreds and thousands of years later. You're right, there's something magic about doing anything and that little critic in your head that stops you from bringing into the world, but it's also a lot of responsibility. So I guess just ought to be lucky.
Leafbox (56:58):
Yeah. Well, what's the Sorcerer's Tale, right? Once you create the magic to move the broom, right? If you don't know where your spells are going, the Disney you, the original Disney's character, the brooms started taking over the room. I dunno if you remember that scene from Disney movie, but once you put out The Magic , there's that famous Disney movie from the twenties, the Soer. Yeah,
Jason Trucco:
No, I definitely remember. The The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia.
Leafbox :
Correct. That's it. So anytime you spell cast with your words or your creation, you have to understand that it might have an impact that you might not imagine, right? The same if you say anything, it has some positive impact and it might vibrate in a different way that you never imagined. So that responsibility is always there.
Jason Trucco:
Yes, I think that's absolutely true and absolutely lovely. And it's funny, when I struggled at the beginning of this conversation to think of where the first love of movie I'd seen, and I was just thinking of some animated movie, it's true. These stories become our way of communicating to each other and a lot of the things that feel poetically true, being verified by our experiences.
Leafbox :
Well, Jason, I don't want to take more of your time. Jason's just sending you a lot of love. Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the sun.
Jason Trucco :
Thanks so much. Thank you. Talk to you later. Bye-Bye.
